“Where would I begin looking for Świętowit? When was the last time you saw him?”
Malina’s eyes flick to Roksana, and I turn to her for my answer. “We have never seen him,” she says, “nor has anyone in living memory. He has either four heads or four faces on one head, depending on how he manifests. Pretty sure he’d get into the news if he’d been around recently.”
Her dry comment earns a laugh from the coven, but it is marvelous news to my hound. “Wow! He could eat four steaks at one time!”
But he only has one stomach, Orlaith. I’d be worried about four sets of teeth to brush. Or what if he got sick? Four stuffed noses. Ew.
Roksana continues, “I would suggest looking around Jaromarsburg, or speaking with Perun, if you have access to him. He may be able to provide you with some clues.” I nod, thinking I should talk to him in any case. He’d surely be interested to know Weles is likely allied with Loki. It makes more sense than Loki’s assertion that he went after Perun so Ahard simply because he despises thunder gods. There are a buttload of thunder gods in the world’s pantheons. Why single out Perun? He must have had cause. And thinking of causes, I had to question why they were so interested in this horse.
“This is more about giving the finger to Loki than finding the horse, isn’t it?”
The witches all looked to Malina to answer that one. She nodded once. “Both him and Weles. The Zoryas do not often spend much of their time on the Slavic plane but had they been there when Loki set fire to it, they would have been burned. It gives me nightmares. And to think we already had Loki in our power once…” She shook her head. “Well. I would like another chance at that. Or if I can’t have him, at least deny him whatever he desires.”
“All right, then,” I say, and look at Malina. “I find Świętowit or his horse, but preferably the horse, and either bring it to you or confirm it’s dead, and in return you give me a divination cloak.”
“Agreed, but with an amendment: If you find Świętowit dead or alive, we would like to know where he is.”
I extend my hand to her and say, “I accept your proposal.” She shakes it and I smile, because I have a bona fide quest. “If he’s on another plane, I wouldn’t be able to bring him here anyway. Bringing back the horse will be tough enough.”
Malina’s brows draw together. “Why is that?”
“I only have one other headspace in which to carry someone else when I travel the planes. Right now I’ve been using that for Orlaith. I need to memorize a body of work in another language before I can bring someone else along for the ride—it provides structure for the shift because people are put together in specific sequences like words are in literature. I learned how to speak Russian, but so far their literature is pretty dire and gloomy and I haven’t felt like memorizing any of it.”
“Szymborska!” Berta blurts out, and the faces of the other witches light up.
“Yes!” Roksana says, more excited than I’ve seen her. She nods so enthusiastically that I fear for her neck. “You should learn Polish and read Szymborska!”
“I’m sorry, who?”
“Wisława Szymborksa was a Polish poet, and a Nobel Prize winner,” Klaudia explains. “She wrote about small things, details in life that carry great significance. The English translation I saw in America was a good one. Maybe you should try that, and then, if you like her work, learn to read it in Polish.”
“That’s an excellent idea,” Malina says. “Szymborska isn’t a dire nihilist.”
“Thanks for the tip. I’ll definitely look into it.” I rise to my feet, eager to get on with it. “I’ll meet you back here when I have something. I’m sure I won’t have to tell you when—you’ll probably know that before I do, haha.”
They laugh politely, but Malina stops me after a couple of steps. “Before you go, Granuaile, might you have any idea about when Mr. O’Sullivan plans to make good on his promise to rid Poland of vampires?”
“Oh, he’s working on it,” I say. “That’s for sure.”
“We know he’s been eliminating vampires elsewhere,” she replies. “But he’s not doing it here, where he said he would.”
“I haven’t seen or spoken to him for a while, but I’m sure he hasn’t forgotten and I’m sure he has a plan.”
“Do remind him for us the next time you speak, won’t you?”
“I will,” I promise. “See you later, Sisters. Enjoy your picnic.”
“Where are we going now?” Orlaith asks as we return to the tree.
Germany. You know they have sausages in vending machines there?
“They do? Germany sounds like a very smart country.”
CHAPTER 10
I didn’t tell Oberon how worried I was about him as I ran the bathwater. I just reminded him not to lick his chops until I said it was safe and to let me know if he felt any pain. I’d had to trigger my healing charm already to combat ichor poisoning; a couple of Diana’s bone splinters had cut my skin, and the insidious stuff had entered my bloodstream. Trace amounts like that I could take care of, but if Oberon ingested a mouthful I’d be hard pressed to deal with that.
Sam and Ty had one of those detachable showerheads with a ringed metal hose that visually suggested a steel caterpillar. Turning the water on full blast to get the most pressure I could, I told Oberon to close his eyes so I could focus on his snout first.
“Hey! Suffering cats, Atticus, what are you doing?” he protested, and squirmed as the water assaulted his snout and began to sluice the ichor away.
“Keep still, buddy. We have to get this off you quickly.”
“You’re acting like it’s nuclear waste.”
“It’s worse than that.”
“It is? Then get it off me!”
“I’m working on it, Oberon.”
“Tell me that story so I can think about something else.”
“All right, we’re heading back in time to seventeenth-century France, at the court of Louis the Fourteenth.”
“Did he ever get mad about his name?”
“What?”
“Did he ever say, “Geez, all the names in the world out there and my family picked Louis fourteen times?””
“I don’t think he was embarrassed about it. He was the king.”
“Oh. Yeah, I guess that would take the sting out of it.”
The court of a king is littered with pages waiting to do small errands for the nobility. You’re tripping over them quite often, and someone has to train them how to get out of the way and conduct themselves properly. That task fell to the father of our heroine, who trained his daughter with all the pages of the court to fence and take insult and give it right back. Her name was Julie d’Aubigny, and she was married very young to a man named Maupin, who was sent to the south of France for work while she remained in Paris. She was known as Mademoiselle Maupin after that, a famous opera singer, lover, and duelist.
She often dressed as a man but did not disguise her face or do anything else to pretend she was actually male; she sang for her supper in local taverns and participated in fencing exhibitions with a man she traveled with for a while. But when she tired of him, she began a torrid affair with a young woman, and eventually her lover’s family found out and decided to solve what they saw as a problem by sending the young woman to a convent. Mademoiselle Maupin did not give up, however—she was in love. She applied to this convent in Avignon herself, taking her vows and reuniting with the young woman. She immediately began plotting their escape and came up with a simple plan: Set something on fire. What she set on fire was the body of another nun—already dead—in the bed of her young lover, thereby covering their escape. They had another three months of passion together before their own flame flickered out and the girl returned to her family. Mademoiselle Maupin, in the meantime, was charged with arson and body snatching, the penalty for which was to be burned alive. She never faced those charges, though—she got pardoned by Louis XIV later, thanks to her connections at court.